


brighter than the sun

by taizi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant to a Point, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Post-Hogwarts, golden trio centric, headcanon heavy, rons a good friend, so gratuitous dursley mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 09:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11780271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Harry stands unflinchingly between his friends and danger as if that's all he's good for, but Ron has always known why. Ron was twelve when he saw the bars on Harry's windows, but it's not as though he'sforgotten.





	brighter than the sun

**Author's Note:**

> i actually wrote this about a year ago and forgot to post it outside of tumblr :') mostly canon-compliant, but it diverges from DH just enough to indulge all my little headcanons

Harry watches him with wary eyes, and all at once Ron wants to either snatch him into a tight embrace or shake him until his teeth rattle.

“You,” he says, very clearly, “are an  _idiot._ ”

Harry doesn’t blink, but he draws away somehow without moving at all, and Ron stalks a solid step forward that makes sure his friend is cornered.

An article appeared two days ago in the Daily Prophet, one that boasted  _The Chosen One’s Secrets Revealed!_ with exclusive interviews conducted by none other than Rita Skeeter herself – interviews with Harry’s rotten Muggle family, who, Ron thought with more cruelty than he was used to thinking with, probably saw a stack of shiny Galleons and were happy to sit in the same room with a few  _freaks_ for as long as it took to land that gold in their greedy pockets. Nevermind what it would do to Harry, nevermind the kind of conclusions Mind-Healers and scholars and Harry’s teachers and friends would rightly draw from the article.

It’s not like the Dursleys came out and  _said_ they locked Harry in a cupboard and fed him through a cat-flap and left bruises on his arms from where they grabbed and yanked too hard, but what they  _did_ say – even looking past Skeeter’s blatant editorializing – said more than enough.

And in the wake of the public outcry, Harry disappeared. Locked the Floo in Grimmauld Place, strengthened the wards to keep out even owls, and Ron stood on the Apparation point and stared at the front door just out of his reach, drowning in a cresting wave of dread and worry and aching sympathy.

Then he went to George for a way to get through Grimmauld Place’s toothed defenses. And without hesitating, George put aside the horrible-looking device he had been working on –  _“For Skeeter,”_ he offered, without smiling – and gave Ron a violent hammering spell that would work.

(If Ron is ever, for some reason, asked to rank the members of his family by their levels of iron-clad devotion to Harry Potter, George would only be second to himself. Harry knows grief and loss and hopeless yearning better than anyone, and comes the closest to understanding the gaping hole in George’s heart after the war, and is probably the only reason George could be coaxed back from the terrifying, perilous edge he had been living on since the day that Fred died. They’re still close, even now, and George loves Harry dearly.)

As in the way of all Wheezes, benevolent or otherwise, George’s spell did its job better than well. Ron felt the wards break without remorse (it’s not like Harry would have to fix them on his  _own,_ after all) and ignored the heavy ache in his limbs as his wells of magic all but drained in favor of kicking the front door open and stamping into the entrance hall. 

And that’s where he found his best friend – wand in his pocket and out of reach, because he could pick Ron’s magical signature apart in a crowd of thousands, and he knew who it was storming their way inside – staring at Ron like he had never seen him before.

He’s still staring, with eyes the color of lightning, and that only means he’s two seconds away from either anguish or anger, and Ron has to force his temper down under the heel of his foot to make sure neither of them blow up.

“You’re an idiot for thinking you had to hide from me,” he clarifies with forced calm, fists clenching. “How could you think – honestly, mate, I’m at a loss here.”

Hermione is out of the country, on holiday with her parents in France; a holiday Ron opted out of, in favor of the case that had landed on his and Harry’s desks last-minute, and thank Merlin for that. He doesn’t know what might have happened if  _both_ of them had been gone when this fresh hell broke loose. 

As it stands, he wrote to Hermione immediately, hardly more than two lines of urgent  _need you_ along with a clipping of the headline story that turned the Wizarding World on its ear, and he knows it will only be a matter of hours before she comes home and brings her own special brand of wrath down on Skeeter and the Prophet and any unfortunate soul who happens to be standing in between.

It isn’t often they get to bare their teeth at the world and protect  _him,_ for a change. Harry is strong enough to weather most blows without flinching, with his wild magic – fractured irreparably, ever since that final, day-long duel with You-Know-Who – and his iron-clad control of that wild magic, and his working knowledge of Defense that’s as deep and rich as a sprawling forest. But certain things can cut his legs out from under him as easy as breathing, and never before in such a big way as this.

(Harry stands unflinchingly between his friends and danger as if that’s all he’s good for, but Ron has always known why. Ron was twelve when he saw the bars on Harry’s windows, but it’s not as though he’s  _forgotten._ )

“I didn’t – ” Harry starts, and stops, and then pushes on again with the same remarkable courage that called Gryffindor’s sword to him in the Chamber of Secrets. “I wasn’t hiding from you, Ron.”

He says  _hiding_ like it leaves a bad taste on his tongue, and in another time and place, Ron would have grinned at him. Here and now, he throws his hands up with an incredulous, “I had to  _break in_ to your house, Harry! No matter how strong your wards are, you didn’t have to close them to  _me._ I want to help, you tosser, and I can’t very well do that from standing in the street, can I?” He takes a step forward, and another, then judges that’s close enough for now by the way Harry’s eyes flicker.

“How  _did_ you break in?” Harry asks after a moment, sidestepping the wider issue in such an obvious way Ron has to fight not to roll his eyes.

“George, obviously. And you better not ignore his owls like you did mine.”

Harry closes his eyes. “I would never,” he says, and Ron knows he means it. “I just – Mrs. Weasley wrote me, and it – ”

An ugly feeling curdles in Ron’s stomach. He loves his mother to the sun and back, and she does nothing less than her best for her kids, adopted or otherwise; but sometimes, as proven by the way she buys into quacks like Lockhart and Skeeter, she really doesn’t have a clue.

“It was bad,” Harry finishes lamely. “Her quill shook so bad near the end of the letter I could hardly make out some of the words. I know that I hurt her, with her finding out this way, and I never intended – I didn’t tell  _anyone,_ I didn’t just not tell  _her._ You and Hermione knew, but that’s different.”

“I know, mate. I’ll talk to her,” Ron promises swiftly, and then he figures it’s safe to cross those last few feet and touch him. A hand on his arm, fingers curling firmly around his shoulder, and half of the tension in Harry’s thin frame eases away. “I can see why you’re blocking owls, now, at least. Sorry for yelling at you.”

In some ways, the sympathy and the good intentions are probably harder to swallow than anything mean or ignorant. Considering he’s  _Harry,_ and he does everything backwards  _anyway,_ he would probably have preferred a dozen Howlers to Ron’s mum’s heartfelt letter.

(An honest voice in the back of his mind that sounds too much like his fiancee for Ron to ignore points out that the earliest lessons are the hardest to unlearn, and Harry lived until he was eleven without expecting kindness or concern in any way, from anyone. Even now, some days, Harry will falter in odd places, as though love – even in the form of his two closest friends – is something unfamiliar to him.)

“You’re taking this really well,” Harry hedges, and Ron gives in to the urge to shake him. Just a little.

“I’m going to  _murder_ Skeeter, if George doesn’t get to her first,” he replies, with a mild smile that belies the anger simmering in the pit of his chest. “If that’s what you mean by ‘well.’ And as for your aunt and uncle – let’s just say I’d give a  _lot_ for five minutes in a room alone with them.”

Harry blinks. Then a smile edges its way into the furthest corners of his face, reluctant and helplessly amused. “You’ve said that before.”

“And I meant it before, too,” Ron snaps, but the snap is mostly for show, and when he moves his hand to Harry’s opposite shoulder to wrap a companionable arm around him instead, Harry leans into it gratefully.

And really, they should be talking about how  _Harry’s_ taking it, having his past dug up and flung across the front page – as though after everything he’s already given for the world, he should be happy to let it take   _more_ – even if it means poking at scars more than two decades old.

But Hermione will want to be here when they do, with her vicious sense of justice and her even more vicious love for Ron and Harry, and nothing sounds better than calling Kreacher for tea and sandwiches and settling comfortably in front of the hearth in the library to wait for her. They go through some of the mail that Harry’s recieved so far, and it’s easier on him when Ron is there to either laugh or scowl at the letters, depending on what level of stupid or cringe-worthy each one is. Some of them just get tossed into the fire without a word, and Harry trusts his judgement enough not to ask why.

“I mean,” Ron says abruptly, a quarter-hour later, because he can’t help it, “you were never going to have to face all of this alone.”

When he was a child, Ron braved a three-headed dog and an enchanted chess set and the Chamber of Secrets with his best friend. Since then, whether it was the Department of Mysteries or the Horcrux hunts or the mean whispers that followed them through school every time the Ministry turned its back on him, Harry’s  _never_ had to face it alone.

Ron knows Harry loves them. He sees it like sunshine in Harry’s eyes when they’re together, bright enough to sometimes burn back the shadows You-Know-Who left on his soul. But Ron does have to doubt, now and then, that Harry knows that love is returned tenfold.

“You  _know_ we’re with you, don’t you, Harry?” Ron presses, watching him carefully. “You know you’re our family, don’t you?”

And it takes a moment, but then that sunshine unfolds in his eyes, and a wider smile touches the corners of his mouth, and Harry shoves the untidy fringe out of his face to look at Ron across the table.

“After what you did to my house?” he asks dryly, arching an eyebrow in an echo of Sirius he’s probably not even aware of – an effect ruined completely by the obvious, wide-open affection in his voice. “Of course I know that. You never let me forget it.”


End file.
